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Zoe and Evie were in Little Harbor for three glorious days. One night they had dinner at The Lobster Trap, Charlie included. Zoe ate a lobster roll and Evie ordered steamed clams. Eliza ordered just a salad because she predicted correctly that Evie would never finish the clams. Judith had a lobster cake and the house specialty, a lobster Bloody Mary. Then a second. A third after that. Charlie ate next to nothing, but he ordered a burger he meant to eat, and that was something. One night, Eliza made chicken cutlets for everybody except for Evie, who ate yogurt. They played eleven games of Uno, fourteen games of War. They played five rounds of the Game of Life on Zoe’s iPhone. Zoe checked her Instagram feed a total of thirty-one times, liked one hundred and seven photos, commented on seventeen. She posted three times herself, garnering seventy-five likes (her new record) on her photo of the lobster boats in the harbor with a spectacular blood-orange sunset behind them. Evie took one shower, reluctantly, and Zoe took four; Eliza had to rap on the door three of the four times to remind her that the hot water tank in this house was much smaller than it was at home. Evie mentioned one time that she was missing Charlotte’s Web practice, but that it didn’t matter, and Zoe made passing reference to a slumber party at Hannah Coogan’s but then admitted that she really didn’t care if she went or not. Charlie slept a lot and when he was awake he sat in his recliner and the girls sat next to each other on the sofa and watched him. When he wanted to talk they talked, and when he wanted to remain silent they remained silent, and overall they made Eliza proud.
There was one thing, though. It gave Eliza chills when she thought about it later, and forever after.
On the second evening Zoe was upstairs (“reading,” she said, but Eliza knew that meant “texting”) and Evie was in the living room with Charlie. Eliza was fiddling around in the kitchen, wiping down the refrigerator shelves, making a grocery list, when Evie came in.
“Grandpa just said the funniest thing,” said Evie. Eliza realized later that she must have missed a clue in Evie’s voice, a quaver. Maybe a hint of terror on her face.
“Oh yeah?” Eliza glanced up quickly, then back down at her shopping list. Eggs, definitely. Milk, maybe. “What’d he say?”
“He asked me if I could see the purple birds that were knitting little sweaters.”
Eliza felt herself go all hot and then cold and then hot again. A hallucination, because of the tumor. Not uncommon. “Well, that’s interesting,” said Eliza carefully. “Birds can’t knit.”
“No,” said Evie. “I don’t think they can usually knit.”
“What’d you say?” asked Eliza. She moved toward the living room, but not too fast, to keep from panicking Evie.
“I said I couldn’t see them,” said Evie. “And then he closed his eyes, and then I came in here.” Her lip wobbled a little bit, the way it used to when she was a toddler.
Charlie was asleep, his head tipped back, his breathing slightly ragged.
“Okay,” said Eliza brightly, falsely, returning to the kitchen. “I think Grandpa was just being silly, playing a little game with you.”
“That’s not Grandpa’s kind of silly,” said Evie accurately.
Eliza tried to steady her own voice, and she reached over and pulled Evie close to her, smoothing her hair. “No,” she said. “No, it’s not.”
On the final evening, Judith and Gail Byron wanted to take the girls to dinner at the yacht club on the Point. Eliza, who had never, in her whole life, eaten at the yacht club on the Point, felt something within her shift uncomfortably at the suggestion.
“Of course you’re welcome too,” said Judith. “You and your father.”
Eliza tried not to laugh in Judith’s face at that, but it was difficult; the image was riotous. Sick or not, Charlie Sargent would rather eat a fistful of sandy lobster shells than put on a collared shirt (which he might or might not own) to eat at the yacht club with the summer people. He’d do The Lobster Trap, because of the girls, but he’d draw a hard line at the yacht club. Eliza was trying not to be rude, so she demurred politely and said Charlie was tired. She told her daughters to put on sundresses and she sent them on their way.
It was arranged that Eliza would pick up the girls when dinner was over so Judith didn’t have to drive them back. (This was Eliza’s idea, to prevent Judith from tipsily piloting her BMW down the Point’s winding road.) As she drove to the club, she lowered the window and breathed in the truly excellent summer air. There really was something about it—it was as if the fog that rolled in almost every night had its very own texture. You breathed it in, of course, but you also absorbed it through your very pores, and somehow you felt cleaner for it. It was a magical time of night, a bit past twilight but not quite dark, and she could see figures on the porch of one of the big summerhouses; she could practically hear the ice tinkling in the glasses and smell the limes from the gin and tonics.
She got to the club early and stood silently near a small window that looked into the dining room where the girls were finishing dinner with Judith and Gail Byron. The table was clear of dishes; the women were drinking coffee, and Evie and Zoe had glasses in front of them with what looked like the dregs of Shirley Temples. Each girl still had a napkin on her lap and Evie was telling a story that involved lots of gesticulating.
Everybody at the table had a head tipped back in what looked like genuine laughter. From the get-go, from the time she’d said her first word (pajamas—three syllables!) at eighteen months, Evie had known how to tell a story.
But there was something else that made Eliza’s heart stagger and wobble along in that particular way. Standing there in the dark, an outsider in the literal sense of the word, practically trampling on the hydrangea bushes that circled the building, she had to wait for a moment to figure it out.
Yes, here it was.
Her children were utterly comfortable and at ease at that table, in Eliza’s own hometown, in a place she’d never been as a guest and wouldn’t have known what to do if she had been. Her children knew which fork to use for shrimp cocktail! While deep down Eliza was still the scrappy kid she’d been at their ages: riding around on lobster boats, baiting traps, biting her nails, refusing to comb her hair, dirty hands, dirty feet, dirty mouth. Her children were wise and funny and tender and they’d probably end up teaching Eliza way more than she’d ever be able to teach them. Which was comforting, but also really, really vexing.
The next day, as Eliza helped Judith and the girls pack their things into the BMW, Judith said, “I wish you could have talked Rob out of his decision.”
Eliza said, “Huh?” Then she corrected herself and said, “Excuse me?”
“He said it was both of you, but I’m sure he was at the helm. So to speak.”